


the other path

by Aesoleucian



Series: The Nature of Water [2]
Category: Naruto
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-01
Updated: 2017-02-01
Packaged: 2018-09-21 08:49:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,030
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9540398
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Aesoleucian/pseuds/Aesoleucian
Summary: Nekomamora, 29 years after its founding. Orochimaru doesn't have questions, and then she has a lot.





	

**Author's Note:**

> this is the kind of person I am. I came here for 2 things: trans orochimaru and ninshuu. I can't consider it a happy ending at all if the ninja system is preserved, so I wanted to show the work people were doing to dismantle it, including matatabi. SO here is a story about 5-year-old orochimaru poking her nose into politics that are still too big for her.

It’s more difficult to walk up the mountain in sandals, so Orochimaru usually chooses to go barefoot. It’s not like Matatabi minds; when she takes human form, she’s always barefoot, and anyway Orochimaru is wearing a very nice kimono and bringing an offering on behalf of the whole clan. Matatabi is already in her human form, in anticipation of the good beef Orochimaru always brings. She smiles with slitted eyes and pushes a few cats off the trailing end of her robe so she can greet Orochimaru at the entrance to the shrine. “ **Welcome,** ” she says, taking Orochimaru’s free hand, walking back toward the hearth. “ **I’ve heated up the grill.** ”

She sits back down by her hearth—god-sized—where a small corner has been converted into a grill in case humans want to eat with her. She unwraps the first package of meat and inhales with a partially open mouth, taking in the smell. Orochimaru, tense, lets her take the first piece and watches her chew on it before putting a second piece on the grill.

She hands another piece of meat to one of the cats who has already settled on her robe where it pools on the ground around her. “ **You’re nervous. What’s on your mind, young one?** ”

“Can I be a woman?” It comes out low and quick, almost in a mutter.

“ **Not until you grow up. Isn’t it true that you’ll be a girl for a while longer? You _are_ only five years old.** ”

Orochimaru lets out the breath she’s been holding and hunches over her knees for a moment before she straightens up properly again. “Most people I’ve told don’t believe I can be a woman. They think I’m a boy. I hate boys, though. They grow up to be men, and there’s nothing worse.”

Matatabi raises one eyebrow while Orochimaru puts another piece of meat on the grill, watching her out of the corner of her eye. “ **I can think of many things worse than men. To be honest, I hardly understand the distinction between your sexes. I am the least helpful person to ask.** ”

“Why are you—why do you use feminine pronouns and look like a woman?”

“ **Aesthetically, I find it more pleasing.** ” Matatabi turns her head serenely to look toward the back of the shrine, where some of the cats are playfighting loudly. “ **It communicates something about my personality. But your decision is based on more than aesthetics, isn’t it?** ”

“Yes. I think so. I don’t really know what it is, I just don’t want to be a boy.”

“ **It hardly matters, I’m sure. Would you like to tell me what you’ve learned since last we spoke?** ”

Orochimaru closes her eyes for a moment and just breathes in-out to calm her heartbeat, because _it hardly matters_. Then she says, “I learned to sense the chakra flow of plants. Doron-san showed me how to tell if a plant is healthy or not.”

“ **A useful skill for a gardener,** ” says Matatabi agreeably. Orochimaru doesn’t want to be a gardener. She wants to be like the Nidaime, who understands chakra so well that he invented half the ninjutsu and fuuinjutsu used in Neko today.

“I’m going to be a shinobi,” she says. “I’m going to learn _everything_ about chakra and the human body.”

“ **I wonder what Father would think,** ” says Matatabi. She starts chewing on another piece of meat, staring pensively down at the far edge of the village, where a grove of cherry trees is in bloom. “ **I try not to interfere in your village, because it’s more interesting to see what you’ll do on your own—but shinobi are a blight on this world. They use chakra to injure and kill.** ”

Orochimaru gives her a skeptical look. “What else would we use it for? We need to stop people from breaking the law.”

“ **Why do people break laws, child?** ”

Orochimaru has been told that it’s because some people are wicked and enjoy violence. She’s unimpressed by this explanation, though, because the distinction between doing-violence-because-it’s-fun and doing-violence-because-we-have-to has always been unclear. Someone could just lie and say they didn’t enjoy violence, and probably plenty of Neko shinobi do. “I don’t know,” she says. “I’ve never met anyone who broke a law.” She finishes blowing on her cooked strip of beef and eats it. It’s tastier than what they usually have at home, because her mother buys better meat for Matatabi, so she makes sure to savor it.

Matatabi is about to reply when her eyes shift focus. She stares at the entrance of the shrine, and blue flames start to appear above her back. Is she getting ready to fight? “ **No need to skulk about, brother. Come and join us.** ” Absolutely nothing happens. Orochimaru turns to look at the entrance, and then back to look at Matatabi, and she shrugs. “ **I think he prefers to skulk.** ”

 

Orochimaru comes back home with a lot of questions about ethics and even more recommendations for texts to read. She almost can’t believe Matatabi seriously expects her not to become a shinobi. There’s no glory in anything else, no reason to be anything else but what gives you the power to decide your own fate.

…Then again, all of that is what she heard from shinobi. It does make sense to ask as many different kinds of people as possible. Maybe she _will_ talk to a gardener. It’s a new kind of research, research that’s not done with books, not to find out solid facts. Instead Orochimaru will make her own facts out of what other people believe to be true. It’s kind of exciting.

Orochimaru’s mother, Junko, is a shinobi, but she’s not like other shinobi, Orochimaru is sure. She only takes assassination missions, and she kills as gently as she can. Orochimaru knows because she’s explained the effects of every one of her poisons in great detail, and she’s teaching Orochimaru about how to kill silently with a few needles. So Orochimaru asks her: “Why are you a shinobi?”

“I was raised to be one,” Junko says, and pauses. “During the age of warring clans, it was necessary to protect our clan from the others who used violence to get their way. I’m sure they said the same thing about us.” She exhales, a small, amused laugh. “Now it puts food on the table.”

“And Senchi, he’s the same?”

“Your father enjoys being a shinobi. He finds it thrilling. For me, it’s just a job. What’s this about?”

“Matatabi-sama said shinobi are a blight on the world because they use chakra to hurt people.”

Junko smiles. “That’s probably true.”

Orochimaru stands up and goes back to the door to put her outside shoes on. “I’m going to Tsunade’s.”

“Going to ask more questions of the Uzumaki?”

“Yes. And their gardener.”

 

“Would I want to be a shinobi?” asks Shigeru, scratching at his beard. He’s the Uzumaki family’s gardener, and Orochimaru interrupted him while he was checking some of the flowering bushes for bugs. He seems to be glad for an excuse to stand up straight for a little while. “I dunno, kid. Seems too exciting for me. I’d rather not run the risk of getting killed. Plus, you get your limbs chopped off and stuff.”

“Is it wrong for shinobi to do that?”

“It’s not right for me, getting a limb chopped off, I’ll tell you that.”

“But if it were you chopping off limbs! Would that be wrong?”

“It’s not right for me,” says Shigeru firmly.

Orochimaru leaves a little dissatisfied.

She goes back inside to where Tsunade is watching her little brother, doodling made-up seals on a slate. “Nobody has thought through the ethics of shinobi existing,” she complains. “You’d think Matatabi-sama would at least have made a few other people think about it.”

“Maybe you’re not asking the people who hang out with Mata-sama,” says Tsunade, looking up at her. “Your mom doesn’t, and Shigeru-san doesn’t, right? You should ask Tobi-oji. He’s pretty much Mata-sama’s best friend.”

“Do you really think I’ll get something useful out of the Hokage? He’s kind of in charge of all the shinobi. If he thought there was any problem with them existing, we wouldn’t have them.”

Tsunade rolls her eyes. “The Hokage doesn’t have absolute power, Orochimaru. He has to listen to the council of elders and his husband and all the normal people in the village. He can’t make—unilateral decisions.” She looks very proud of the word _unilateral_ , and Orochimaru is pretty impressed since she doesn’t actually know what it means. She raises her eyebrows, and Tsunade elaborates: “That means he can’t make decisions on his own. Anyway, he thinks a _lot_. Way more than my grandpas. You could ask my grandma too, it seems like she thinks a lot about politics.”

“When is Nidaime-sama going to be home?”

“Ehh, he works really late. And he gets up really early. You should talk to Uncle Izuna if you want to catch him. But my grandma is home most of the time!”

 

“Shinobi are a tool useful for foreign policy, but not essential in and of themselves,” the Shodai Hokage tells Orochimaru. “Shinobi missions used to be the basis of the economy, but more and more of them are being hired as temporary manual laborers. Twenty-five years ago it was necessary to make a show of military and personal strength as a deterrent to attacks by other countries, but today they have very little incentive to attack. Since the Namekuji war—which lasted, as you may know, about three months—and the disastrous civil war that followed, no daimyo has been willing to sanction anything like it. Does that answer your question?”

Orochimaru squints at her. “So is Nidaime-sama doing that on purpose, or is it just happening?”

Uzumaki Mito smiles at Orochimaru, and she’s reminded of Matatabi’s smile. “Yes, Tobirama is intentionally weakening the connection between military and political power. I started that work thirty years ago, and you can see that we’ve only come so far, but it is happening. I was very fortunate to have him as an advisor.”

Now Orochimaru wants to meet him even more. She’s always admired his technical innovations, and now his political ones too. “Thank you, Shodai-sama.” She bows. “I’ll try to talk to him.”

“His house is very close to here. Izuna should be home right now. He might let you stay for dinner, since you’re a cute child.”

Orochimaru wrinkles her nose at the idea of being called cute, but she bows again anyway before she leaves.

 

As Orochimaru is walking to the Nidaime’s house, thinking hard about the answers she’s gotten so far, she has to sidestep an old man standing in the middle of the road. “Excuse me,” she murmurs.

“You’re Tsukikage Orochimaru, aren’t you?” says the old man.

She stops (a good distance away from him) and turns around warily. “Why do you want to know?”

“I heard you were asking around about shinobi ethics,” says the old man. He has dark hair tied in a knot on top of his head, and a robe that looks like it was once fancy from the way it drags along the ground—but it’s also pretty dirty and tattered. There’s no way he’s not some kind of spirit. Which means it would be a good idea to be polite.

“Yes,” says Orochimaru. “What do you think of shinobi? You’re not one, are you.”

“I’d rather cut my own throat than be a shinobi,” says the old man casually. “It used to be so easy not to be bothered with them, but lately they’re everywhere. Malice hangs like a fog over this land, now, like it rolled in overnight. Your wars only get bigger and more efficient, no matter how you tell yourselves your aim is peace.”

“I heard the Hokage is trying to fix it,” she tells him. She feels obliged to relay the information she just found out, if it will make him less… intense, and anyway she likes showing that she knows things. “He’s trying to make shinobi do farm work and things like that instead of fighting missions.”

“Good for him,” says the old man, with a sneer. He starts walking in the direction Orochimaru was going, so she follows him. “If only it weren’t for those idiots in turtle country I could fix it myself, but you humans always get upset about that sort of thing.”

So he’s confirming that he’s a spirit. The only other spirit Orochimaru has met is Matatabi, but she did say her brother was sneaking around Neko… “Are you Matatabi-sama’s brother?”

The old man stops in the road to turn narrowed eyes on her. His face changes for a moment, as if mist is drifting off it—underneath she can see that his eyes are red and slit-pupiled, and that he has three whisker-like marks on each of his cheeks. “Well guessed,” he says, as the mist settles on his face again. It’s some kind of genjutsu. “Kyuubi no Youko.”

“Your name is Youko?”

The kyuubi rolls his eyes and turns around to start walking again. “Unlike some, I don’t give out my name to any idiot who asks.”

“Where are you going?” She runs after him to keep up with his long strides—he’s very tall.

“Same place as you,” he says.

Does he actually _know_ where she’s going, or is he just following-but-walking-in-front? “Where’s that?” she asks.

“To talk to the Hokage, I assume. Thought it’d be a laugh to hear a brat like you interrogating him, and maybe see what my sister’s been making such a fuss about since he founded this village.”

“It’s been _thirty years_ ,” says Orochimaru disbelievingly.  “You still haven’t talked to him?”

“When you get to be two or three thousand years old,” says the kyuubi, “thirty years is really not a big deal.” He lets out a bark—a yip?—of laughter. “Plus, with humans you don’t want to look too eager. They get big heads easily.”

“ _I’m_ human,” says Orochimaru, without conviction.

“You’re a baby,” he says, waving a dismissive hand. “I’m surprised you can even talk. You’re, what, one year old?”

“Five.” It’s not clear if he’s messing with her or not.

“Whatever. You might have the nature of a human, but you haven’t been molded into the shape yet. Matatabi seems to think it’s not too late for you.”

“What do you mean?” Orochimaru asks. Then, a moment later, she realizes—“You _were_ listening in on our conversation today.”

“Most humans are beyond saving by the time they gain the power of critical thought.” He sounds like he’s rolling his eyes again. “You’re either early or late on one of those things, I guess. She’s trying to mold you into her kind of human so she won’t have to get her claws dirty shaping human society.”

“Are you trying to make it sound bad?” asks Orochimaru, genuinely curious. She’s heard a lot of different kinds of manipulation—her mother has taught her most of them personally—so the kyuubi is an interesting study, since she can’t work out whether he’s manipulating her or not. “All she did was ask me some questions. She’s giving me a choice to keep researching it or not. Is this some kind of test to see if you can turn me against her? Because I won’t. She knows more than anyone else in the village, and she always has time to teach me.”

She sees the edge of the kyuubi’s smile as he turns his head away. “I wonder,” is all he says. Something moves under the trailing edge of his robe, and Orochimaru gets a glimpse of several bushy red tails underneath.

 

The Hokage isn’t home when they get there, but his eight cats and his husband are. Uchiha Izuna is sitting in the open doorway to the back garden, painting a picture of a single camellia flower on the bush nearby. Even though he called for them to come in, he doesn’t look up until Orochimaru has already taken off her shoes (the kyuubi was never wearing any). Several of the cats slink out of the room, and one hisses at the kyuubi.

“Hello, Tsukikage-chan,” says Izuna. He looks a little puzzled, but not alarmed, to see a skinny, dirty old man and a five-year-old in his house.  “And… traveler. What brings you here?”

“I’m Orochimaru, but don’t call me Orochimaru-chan,” says Orochimaru. She looks up at the kyuubi, wondering if she should introduce him, and if so how. “I wanted to talk to the Hokage. He wanted to watch me talk to the Hokage and make fun of him.”

“Don’t sell yourself short, brat,” says the kyuubi pleasantly. “I want to make fun of you too.”

“Do you have a name?” asks Izuna, raising his eyebrows.

“Yes,” says the kyuubi. He sits down on one of the cushions near the middle of the room. A dozing cat cracks open one eye, sighs, and stands up to get further away from him.

Orochimaru decides the Hokage’s husband deserves her allegiance far more than a bijuu pretending to be a traveler. “He’s the kyuubi,” she says. “He won’t tell me his name either.”

Izuna puts aside the paper he was painting on—carefully, so as not to let it roll up and smudge the paint. “You shouldn’t be here,” he says.

“What a warm welcome,” says the kyuubi. “I’m touched.”

“Don’t the bijuu have some kind of agreement not to intrude on each other’s territory?”

“I don’t know.” The kyuubi examines his claw-like nails, which are painted black. “I didn’t make any such agreement. In fact, this was my territory for two thousand years before Matatabi suddenly decided she lives here now. And there’s certainly no other territory worth taking, what with all the humans. They have a way of getting everywhere. Like a rash. ”

Izuna sighs. “Yes, fine, prior claims. If Matatabi doesn’t have a problem with you being here, I suppose I don’t either. And Tobirama knows too, or will soon. I just wish you didn’t have to wait for him _here_ , since you seem so intent on bothering me.”

“You’re the one who’s being rude. You haven’t even offered me tea.”

“That’s because I’m trying to get you to go away!”

Bored, Orochimaru sits down by the wall, next to the sleepy cat that wanted to get away from the kyuubi. She picks up its paw and starts squishing it to watch the claws come out. Instead of being annoyed, the cat just starts purring. She squishes harder until its tail starts lashing and the purr turns into a growl. Much more tolerant than other cats she’s met, but every cat has its limit. Ah—

She pulls her hand away and examines the scratches welling with dark blood. Less glancing, deeper tearing of the flesh, than normal.

“Are you bothering Inari over there?” calls Izuna. “I’ll make tea if it will keep you out of trouble.”

Orochimaru lets him make tea, but mostly ignores her cup in favor of dissecting a camellia, trying to identify every part of the flower that she’s seen in diagrams. When he finally sits back down with a bowl of rice crackers, she says, “What do you think about shinobi? Are you glad you are one?”

“I wouldn’t say I’m a shinobi any more,” says Izuna. “It’s been a long time since I had to take a mission. All I do these days is meddle in administrative work where I’m not wanted.” He chuckles, indicating that it was probably a joke.

“So you didn’t like being a shinobi.”

“When I was born, my clan had already been at war with the Senju for two generations. The way my father and grandfather ruled the clan, a child your age would already have been on the battlefield. Most likely, if you lived back then, you’d be dead, like my younger brothers. The more children my father had, the more expendable he considered them.” Izuna pauses to take a sip of tea. Maybe he’s trying not to sound upset. “I had no reason to hate the Senju except that they hated us. Hatred was the air I breathed. I woke up every morning filled with dread that someone I loved would be killed, and I used that fear to kill. I would have died filled with fear and hate if it weren’t for Tobirama.”

Orochimaru turns fully to look at him, widening her eyes to signal that she’s listening. Surely Senju Tobirama hated the Uchiha as much as they hated his clan. Why would he save Izuna’s life? Was he always ahead of the curve? The first to found a protected village, the inventor of hundreds of new jutsu, and now the first to show mercy in three generations?

Izuna smiles out at the garden. “He found me injured in the forest, and instead of killing me he healed me. At the time I thought he was an impostor, or crazy, or maybe that he didn’t want to kill someone in front of his cat.” He laughs. “He was already thinking of creating peace between our clans. He knew my brother would never accept it if I died at the hand of a Senju. I don’t know if I can convey how revolutionary it was at the time—I’m sure that to you such kindness seems like the normal way of Neko.” Not really. What Orochimaru knows of Neko shinobi is mostly whining that their missions are boring and they miss the Namekuji War. That’s only what she’s heard from listening in on chuunin, though. She doesn’t have a lot of opportunities to find out what the shinobi forces at large are saying. She’s _five_.

Izuna seems to be able to guess some of what she’s thinking—maybe there’s doubt on her face—because he says, “Ah, but not as much as it should be. It’s a work in progress.”

“What progress?” says the kyuubi. “I can _feel_ the emotions of this country. It’s still as sickening as it was when this place was a field of corpses. Your precious Hokage have done nothing to purge the hatred from this land. You just can’t see it any more.”

“If you’d like to give us any information about where that hatred exists,” says Izuna, “I’m sure it would be a great help to us in getting rid of it.”

“I would get rid of it myself, if I were guaranteed free reign.”

“You mean killing people, don’t you.” In response, the kyuubi just smiles. His tails twitch lazily against the floor. “You do realize they’d just hate _you_ then.”

“They can’t hate what they can’t find,” says the kyuubi. His form wavers like mist, and Orochimaru can feel something in the air of the room, like a prickle against her skin. Is it his chakra?

“I don’t sanction executions based on your gut feelings,” says Izuna tiredly, “and Tobirama won’t either. Nor will Matatabi thank you for meddling in her country. Hasn’t she been saying for years that violence is never the way to reduce violence?”

“Ah, if only I’d taken the opportunity when it came to me,” sighs the kyuubi. “Your village could be mine to wield. Matatabi’s claws are weak, and she is complacent.”

“If you think like that, we wouldn’t have had you. Nor do we wish to now. Please leave.”

“And if I don’t?”

“I shall tolerate your presence with great distaste until I can convince Matatabi to run you off. Orochimaru-kun, would you be willing—?”

“No need,” says the kyuubi. He rises and pours the last of his tea into his mouth. “Your hatred for me tastes disgusting, anyway.” Then he dissolves into mist, leaving his cup to fall onto the floor.

Izuna picks it up and inspects it for cracks. Orochimaru sees one running down from the rim, and she can see that he looks dismayed. “I didn’t mean to hate him,” he murmurs. “But I hate what he represents, violence as a first recourse to solving problems. He can’t conceive that some humans are allies, not tools or weapons.”

 

The Hokage comes home two hours after sunset, when Orochimaru is already sleepy from concentrating hard on political theory and the rules of go. Izuna is very good, and Orochimaru is frustrated in her complete inability to win a single game. When she plays against Tsunade, she almost always wins, and even against Tsunade’s mother Doron she wins occasionally. After the fifth full-scale game she quits and goes back to taking apart seed pods on the porch while Izuna plays against himself.

She doesn’t even notice when the Hokage comes back, because he does so without any noise at all. The first she knows of it is hearing Izuna say, “Ah, Tobirama, you’re back. I’ve been entertaining a guest who wants to talk to you.”

“I thought you were going to stop letting such _guests_ into our house, Izuna,” says the Hokage as Orochimaru turns around to look. Izuna is already holding onto his arm, and there’s a cat sitting on the Hokage’s shoulder. “You seemed very intent on protecting the sanctity of my free time, once. However, that’s not what concerns me. Were you, or were you not, also entertaining the nine-tailed fox earlier?”

“More like he was entertaining himself with me,” says Izuna, grimacing. “Orochimaru-kun brought him, or he followed her. She was talking to Matatabi and she…” He’s looking at the Hokage, and apparently he’s able to interpret the totally blank expression on his face. “Bijuu drama, in summary.”

Orochimaru takes this opportunity to bow. “Hokage-sama,” she says. “If you don’t wish to be questioned by me, I will leave.”

“She reminds me of you,” says Izuna cheerfully.

“Very well,” says the Hokage. “Are you expecting Yuna to come home for dinner?”

“Dinner time was hours ago. But maybe she just knows there’s no point trying to get a hold of you before full nightfall. She might be at the Uzumaki’s, I don’t know. Why don’t we eat with them?”

“Because dinner time was hours ago,” says the Hokage. “I’ll answer Tsukikage-kun’s questions and then we can go, if you want.”

He looks expectantly at Orochimaru, who takes a deep but silent breath. “Matatabi-sama told me that shinobi are a blight on the world because they use chakra to kill and injure people.”

“True. Did she explain Ninshuu to you?” When Orochimaru shakes her head mutely, he continues, “Ninshuu is the philosophy of the Sage of Six Paths.” _I wonder what Father would think_ , Matatabi said. Is that who she meant? “It was meant to clarify the intended use of chakra, which was given to humans by the Sage. According to Ninshuu, chakra should be used to connect people’s spiritual energies to each other, to heal, to care for the land, and to create art. He was not pleased when humans created ninjutsu, instead using chakra to inflict violence on each other. The forms of ninjutsu that align most closely with Ninshuu are medical ninjutsu and communication techniques.”

“So his children—the bijuu—like ninshuu better than ninjutsu,” says Orochimaru.

“Some of them,” says Izuna. “The fox didn’t seem especially keen on peace. He’d rather wipe out any humans who he feels are malicious.”

“Some have a very different understanding of what it means to make everyone equal in power,” says the Hokage. He looks up at the ceiling, almost like he’s rolling his eyes. “Is that all you needed, Tsukikage-kun?”

“Um, how did you get so good at creating new ninjutsu and fuuinjutsu?” Orochimaru asks.

“It was the only thing I was allowed to do that didn’t involve killing,” says the Hokage. “I only regret that most of them can nonetheless be used to do violence. It has always been the last thing I wanted.” He nods to Orochimaru and takes his husband’s hand. “You’re a friend of Tsunade, aren’t you? Do you want to come with us to the Uzumaki compound?”

Orochimaru nods, and takes his other hand when he holds it out. His hand is huge and warm, and she can practically feel his powerful chakra running under his skin. She’s actually _touching_ the greatest man to ever live, and incidentally the only man who’s worth much of anything. Something changes suddenly, like heat flashing all over her body, and she finds herself in another place. She’s dizzy, but the hand she’s holding onto keeps her steady until she can stand on her own. She takes her hand back quickly, but a little reluctantly, and runs inside to find Tsunade and tell her everything. She only barely remembers to bow to the Hokage.

 

“ **What did you learn yesterday?** ” asks Matatabi.

“I asked a lot of people about their opinions on shinobi, and the Hokage told me about Ninshuu.”

“ **Oh. I thought you were going to research why laws are made and why people break them. Still, I hope it was fruitful for you.** ”

“You _weren’t_ trying to get me to stop wanting to be a shinobi?” asks Orochimaru.

“ **Not everyone who shares opinions is trying to manipulate you. You have been talking to Kurama, haven’t you?** ”

“Is that the fox’s name?” asks Orochimaru. “He wouldn’t tell me.” Matatabi nods, and Orochimaru smiles in satisfaction. Now she has information she’s not supposed to, which is her favorite kind. “I talked to him. He was all for killing humans who like violence too much. He’s a hypocrite.”

Matatabi laughs. It’s a sound Orochimaru enjoys, deep and sonorous. “ **You asked whether I was trying to make you stop wanting to be a shinobi. Why?** ”

“It worked. Everyone told me about how being a shinobi is dangerous and it makes you afraid and full of hatred. I’d rather get knowledge in a different way that’s not likely to get me killed.”

Matatabi looks at her for a long moment—she seems amused and thoughtful both. “ **And your thoughts on using violence against others?** ”

“There are easier ways to get what I want.”

“ **I suppose you really are a human, after all,** ” says Matatabi. “ **Here. Your tea.** ”

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> And for the curious, here's the timeline I wrote to keep events straight.
> 
> Year 0: Nekomamora and Kamemamora founded; Mito becomes the Shodai Hokage (age 22)  
> Year 1: Uzumaki Doron + Hizushi born; Mushimamora founded (in Cliff Country)  
> Year 2-3: Ushi (Lightning Country), Namekuji (Water Country), Saru (Earth Country), and Tanukimamora (Wind Country) founded; peace treaty ratified by 7 protected nations  
> Year 6: Uzumaki Hikaru born (youngest child of Mito & company)  
> Year 7: Tobirama and Izuna adopt Yuna (age 2) surnamed Uchiha because it was Izuna who wanted a kid  
> Year 8: Hiruzen, Danzou, and their age peers born  
> Year 11: the Tanuki War begins as Tanuki tries to seize Ame and Tani  
> Year 14: the Tanuki War ends; borders redrawn to allow agriculture in Wind Country  
> Year 18: Namekuji (stupidly) tries to take Kame and is swiftly defeated by a Kame-Neko-Ushi alliance  
> Year 19: Shodai Mizukage is deposed in a coup and Water Country devolves into civil war  
> Year 20: Mito’s first grandchild, Hizushi’s son, is born; Mito retires (age 42); Tobirama becomes the Nidaime (age 37); Saiken forces peace talks in Namekuji  
> Year 23: Uzumaki Tsunade born; Water Country’s unrest FINALLY settled with reforms  
> Year 24: Tsukikage Orochimaru born  
> Year 27: Uzumaki Nawaki born  
> Year 29: Our Story Begins  
> Year 33: Uchiha Yuna (age 28) takes on Orochimaru and Tsunade as apprentices, emphatically NOT in a shinobi capacity  
> Year 35: Tobirama retires (age 52); Uchiha Kagami becomes the Sandaime (age 26)  
> I didn't come up with anything after that because obviously there's a whole history. But in my ideal world they do phase out the shinobi system and everyone drastically reduces their military strength and invents cool technologies.


End file.
